You’ll Never Look at the Night Sky in the Same Way

What could your city look like with all the lights turned off? Would you see the stars? What would they look like? Chances are, the view would amaze you. These photos from Photographer Thierry Cohen imagine precisely what the night skies would look like in a dozen major cities.

Feast your eyes. This is what the night sky would like in major cities without any street lights:

Paris

Cohen photographs the world’s major cities, seeking out views that resonate for him and noting the precise time, angle, and latitude and longitude of his exposure.

Rio

As the world rotates around its axis the stars that would have been visible above a particular city move to deserts, plains, and other places free of light pollution.

San Francisco

By noting the precise latitude and angle of his cityscape, Cohen is able to track the earth’s rotation to places of atmospheric clarity like the Mojave, the Sahara, and the Atacama desert.

The Empire State Building, New York City

There he sets up his camera to record what is lost to modern urban dwellers.Compositing the two images, Cohen creates a single new image full of resonance and nuance

Los Angeles

The work is both political and spiritual questioning not only what we are doing to the planet but drawing unexpected connections between disparate locations.

São Paulo

Equally importantly it asks: what do we miss by obscuring the visibility of stars? As the world’s population becomes increasingly urban, there is a disjunction with the natural world which both Cohen and science posit causes both physical and psychological harm.

Shanghai

Cities that never sleep are made up of millions of individuals breaking natural cycles of work and repose. Cohen’s photographs attempt to restore our vision, and in beautifully crafted prints and images offer the viewer a possibility – to re-connect us to the infinite energy of the stars.

Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, NY

Hong Kong

These images have left me speechless. I can’t help remembering that story when LA had a blackout in 1994. Supposedly, people called the authorities asking about strange lights in the sky, freaking them out. Those lights turned out to be visible stars.